The Helena League
The remnants of Montana’s wealthy elite and political machinery that survived the nuclear holocaust in a series of “Personal Vaults”, the Helena League operates out of the ruins of Helena. A ruthless organization of wealthy aristocrats protected by an army of mercenaries and robots, they exert no small amount of control over the remaining ruins of Helena, their robots and armed mercenaries picking over the ruins for luxuries to bring back to their masters comfortably waiting out this new dark age from their fortified townhouses and villas near the center of what was once the basis of all government in the Northern Commonwealth. History Culture The Helena League, while masquerading as the pre-war Northern Commonwealth Government under the pretense that they are the rightful provisional government of post-war Montana, is little more than an oligarchic hegemony ruled by the remains of Montana's former political class. Therefore, wealth and status is of singular importance to much of the cities proper citizenry. Economy Government The Helena League's government is a military junta overseen by a collection of the thirteen wealthiest representatives of Helena's most wealthy and politically connected families and their districts, known as the League Council. Of these, one is nominated by vote of the council members to be the Chairman, the chief executive and commander in chief of the League Armed Forces and general figurehead of the League. However, this position's real power is questionable at best, as much of the League's real political power is held by the LAF's Director-General, the field marshal and right hand of the Chairman, as he has a great deal of influence over who gets to climb the ranks of power in the LAF itself and whose professional advice the Chairman is likely to defer to in matters of state security. The Chairman's true purpose is to ensure the citizens, whose monthly tax harvest is the very lifeblood of the League, are kept suppressed and content. To this end, the Chairman must perpetually keep the citizenry pliant and, if need be, cowed, utilizing the League Telecommunications and Broadcasting Company, or LTBC, as a propaganda network designed to draw in more wealthy settlers and keep the current population in a perpetual state of fear of the outside world. The LAF is also nakedly used to quell dissent and any refusal to obey its strict mandate is almost always met with force, unless the individual in question is a very wealthy and very well respected citizen of the League. It is only through fear, paranoia, and the ever present threat of force that the Helena League maintain absolute order in the streets of their city. Beneath the political elite and their paramilitary forces are the citizens of the League proper, those few hundred souls wealthy enough to afford both the entrance fee required to enter the walls of the city center and also afford the yearly tax to maintain their citizenship make up the mobile middle class of the League's population. These people can come from many walks of life, but all are wealthy by the standards of the average wastelander, either the proprietors of successful business ventures or skilled professionals such as medical doctors or engineers. The citizenry are provided by the League with laminated IDs, which they must renew every year via the taxation process. These individuals also have the wealth to vouch for various non-citizens, who are often given residence as laborers or servants, who make up the bulk of the League's population. These non-citizen laborers are provided a 'work visa' in the form of a paper ID, which they must monthly renew, usually consuming the lions share of their wages payed to them by their employers. While effectively wage slaves, these non-citizen laborers are not restricted from purchasing a proper citizenship card, but the reality is that few will ever be able to balance their duties to their paymasters and entrepreneurial pursuits. Still, these non-citizens and their families are provided with the safety and housing behind the League's walls. Finally, there are the merchant class and the squatters who live outside the walls. Of the two, the merchants command the lions share of the League's attention. A great deal of these traders are sponsored by League citizens, and thus are considered valuable assets and allowed non-citizen visas to do business within the walls itself. Independent merchants must purchase their own lodgings, usually from the wealthy few amongst the squatter class, but are allowed to do business with both the squatters and non-citizen residents who must prowl the bazaars of the slums for bargains, as the merchants within the walls tend to charge much higher prices. The squatters are a collection of those few who, while too poor to purchase entrance into the city thrive in the shadow of the LAF's fortified walls, bartering with both the LAF, merchants, and travelers who endlessly filter in and out of the city. These unfortunate dregs are often exploited by the LAF, who patrol their shanties under the pretense of keeping order and weeding out raiders who camp within the shanties. The LAF often extort impromptu 'tax collections' taking what valuable scrap or technology the squatters find to advance themselves. Regardless, the stability provided by the LAF allows the squatters to run various enterprises outside the walls, from small ranching operations to lodging and entertainment for traveling merchants. However, one would be hard pressed to call the junta wholly abusive in nature. Regular curfews and constant heavily armed patrols ensure that all but the most pervasive wasteland pests are regularly scoured clean of the city center, and would be raider gangs within the city center are put to the firing squads within moments of their discovery. All punishments are swift, draconian, and harsh, and thus only the desperate or truly gifted have a chance of maintaining any underworld activity that isn't expressly backed by one of the wealthy elite of the city. While the LAF cannot claim to control the whole of the city, it is unlikely any of the few packs of feral ghouls or ragged raider bands that populate certain highly radioactive or particularly dilapidated parts of the ruins will overrun central Helena's walled and fortified streets anytime in the near future, and regular patrols of the LAF combing over the corpse of the city for any further treasures of the old world regularly displace these bands before they can foment into a true threat. On the whole, most of the League's citizenry were wealthy before their emigration to the city proper, cattle barons with holdings in the city outskirts, merchant princes and prospectors who struck it rich, only figures such as these can afford the otherwise crippling taxes and fees for continued League citizenship. But this also ensures only the highest class of wastelander can inhabit the streets of Helena unmolested, the squatters who filter in regularly being either enslaved via indentured servitude to work off their 'debts' to the League itself, or slain in the streets as raider or communist spies. There is, of course, a bustling community of non-citizen merchants and travelers in certain designated quarters of the city, but these communities are surrounded by walls and armed patrols just as dedicated to keeping tabs on these populations as they are in keeping riff raff and wasteland beasts out. Military The Helena League's armed forces are a collection of mercenaries and descendants of the former National Guard. Though clad in pre-war uniforms and armor emblazoned with the seal of the pre-war Northern Commonwealth, these gunthugs are more akin to jackbooted Gestapo of eons past. Housed in well furnished apartments apart from the rest of the common citizenry of Helena, the League Armed Forces, or LAF for short, have little to no duty or connection to the people they govern, their only loyalty to their aristocratic paymasters in the League Council. Thus, they carry out their orders with cold, ruthless zeal and are ever eager to climb the ladder of ranks and commissions, the easiest means of such a promotion usually being the seizure of some form of pre-war technology which can further the League's stranglehold over the ruins of the city. Though nominally responsible for the the protection of all people within the Helena's fortified streets, the LAF in practice only truly defend the very wealthy and the handful of caravaners with connections to the city itself. While token attempts to protect the trading hubs and squatter shanties in the outskirts are made, as these people are not card-carrying citizens, they can expect no support from the LAF in times of great calamity, such as large-scale raider assaults or the occasional shooting war with forces from the Republic of Billings. If such an event were to occur, the LAF are under operational mandate to abandon those positions and hold the city center at all costs, leaving the hapless squatters and lesser merchants to fend for themselves with whatever they have at hand. The LAF come equipped to the same standard that would be expected of pre-war military forces, clad head to toe in pre-war combat armor, bristling with both advanced and conventional military arms, and supported by a sizable fleet of robots of both military design and retrofitted civilian models. While such an extensive military force is impressive, and the LAF boasts numbers in the hundreds, they are far from a conquering army. LAF doctrine is almost always defensive, and their numbers boast only a handful of veteran fighters who've seen more action than the odd feral ghoul pack of pissant raider gang. In the field, a lack of hardened discipline, esprit de corps, and general experience has forced the League to rely on their fortifications and robotic auxiliaries to achieve meaningful victory. This was made no more apparent than in the disastrous Battle for Rottenegg Spring, in which the smaller, less equipped forces of the Republic of Billings still managed to decisively defeat and put to rout over a third of the LAF's forces in the field. Were it not for the sacrifice of the entire attached robotic auxiliary forces, these forces would have no doubt been reduced to functional casualties. Category:Groups Category:Montana